


Sleeping Beauty

by Septembers_coda



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dreams, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, Slash, Sleep, crazy!Cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-07-30
Packaged: 2017-12-21 20:23:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/904508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septembers_coda/pseuds/Septembers_coda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in late Season 7, but no real spoilers. When Sam mysteriously falls into a deep sleep while working a case, Dean is desperate to find a way to wake him before it’s too late. Can Cas, currently crazy as a loon, help? Dean isn’t sure he wants to let Cas do what he claims will do the trick…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleeping Beauty

Sam walked the paths of this place he’d come to. He knew it well, but he’d forgotten it, and it was empty now. He knew it was never this empty. When he thought of that, he saw people out of the corner of his eye, laughing in the strangely diluted sunlight. They carried books and backpacks. He could see them but not hear them, and when he walked toward them, they slipped away. He was looking for someone, someone who was a deeply buried, never forgotten ache in his heart, but as he saw a wisp of blonde hair, felt a whispered memory of flame, he knew he wouldn’t find her.

It was a strange place. The buildings looked old— golden stone edifices and archways that spoke of the Italian countryside—but they were out of place in a land that looked new; perfectly manicured grass, smooth, bright concrete, and giant palm trees that cast their shadows over the edifices painted in Renaissance style, but with a garish modern edge. There was so much _space,_ and it was all empty. He could hear cars going by, and walked toward the sound. A broad, busy road marked the boundary of this place, and the cars whizzed by, but something about them wasn’t right; it was like he was watching a filmstrip of cars, creating a repeating background to enclose his world. He could not cross the road. There was nothing on the other side.

~***~

“Sam! Sam!” Dean shook his brother frantically—too hard, and he regretted it with a brief shock of pain in his heart when he knocked Sam’s head against the concrete floor of the airplane hangar. “Sorry… sorry…” he muttered, taking Sam’s head in his hands and lifting it, sliding one hand underneath to cushion Sam’s skull, staring as if the intensity of his gaze could wake Sam up. “C’mon, Sam,” he said, lightly slapping Sam’s cheek. “You’ve gotta wake up and tell me what did this to you—I can’t find it! I can’t find anything…”

He paused and gently prised apart Sam’s eyelids. His pupils reacted lazily to the dim light, and his eyes were moving; they continued to move under their lids as Dean let them close again. He pressed his head to Sam’s chest. His heartbeat was slow but steady, his breathing deep and even. Dean could see no sign of injury anywhere on his brother. He was not unconscious. He was sleeping.

“He won’t wake,” said a soft voice.

~* * *~

Sam attended classes and walked around campus, gazing at the beauty of this place with reverent effort. His effort was to remember why he was here— _to get an education. To build your future,_ his mind whispered—but there was so much he couldn’t remember. He ate at the cafeteria, where there was always food at any time of day or night, and never anyone else eating. He went running in the morning, trying to take care of his body out of simple habit. He slept in his dorm room, which seemed too large and clean and empty, and asked his professors questions, but he could never keep their answers or their faces in his mind, and in talking to them, he always found himself alone. So now, mostly, he just walked, pacing the paths and the halls restlessly, taking in the beauty that refused, somehow, to touch him. But he was all right here. There was nothing to hurt him.

Sam wasn’t looking for the man in the trenchcoat—at least, he had not been until he found him. But then he knew he was. He saw the figure taking a curving path through trees that emerged by a pond with a fountain in it, and there was water between them, but Sam knew he should call out, and he did.

“Hey!” he called, and unlike anyone else here, all the figures he had chased and called for and begged to speak to him, the man stopped and turned. He remained solid instead of slipping into shadow, and when he turned and walked back toward Sam, he became even more solid and defined. The too-bright light of this place seemed to gather in him, and when he stopped before Sam, the vivid blue of his eyes was like a slap to Sam’s face, waking him up. It seemed like the only real color in a fading pastel drawing, constantly trying to restore itself and failing. This man was _real_.

“Hello,” he said, and Sam felt a shock: no one here ever spoke first, if they spoke to him at all.

“Hello,” he answered. “Who are you?”

“My name is…” He hesitated for a long moment, seeming to look for the answer in Sam’s face, and he found it. “Castiel.”

They walked together, and Sam tried to ask questions about this place, but Castiel seemed to know less about it than he did. He spoke oddly, too, about odd things, but it felt so right to Sam that he couldn’t think it strange, only a tremendous relief. Where they walked, a brightness sprang to life around them. Things became _real_ now that Cas was here. Cas—Sam heard himself calling the man that, and Cas treated it as utterly natural.

“Are you a teacher here?” Sam asked as they came around the pond, behind the fountain.

Cas did not answer for a long moment. “Yes,” he said, in a sort of wondering tone, as if he were still contemplating whether it was true.

“What do you teach?”

“I can teach anything you like. Would you like to come to one of my classes?”

“Yes, I would.”

~* * *~

Dean glared at Cas over Sam’s prostate body. “Did you come here to help, or are you just gonna spout weird crap and disappear if I sneeze too near you?”

Cas cocked his head. “I do not believe I have ever disappeared when you sneezed. It does not trouble me when you do, although I understand it is troubling to humans doing it. I wonder if octopi spray clouds of ink when they sneeze? They seem to do it at the least provocation, although I do not know if it is possible to sneeze underwater—”

“Ooookay. Weird crap it is. Listen, Cas, I’m worried about Sam—” He paused, getting to his feet and squatting down to pick up Sam. “—and I don’t have time to listen to this. Why did you say he won’t wake?”

“Because he will not,” Cas said, and, brushing Dean aside, bent over to pick up Sam himself, easily lifting the larger man and settling him gently in his arms, like a baby. Dean stared, confounded, as Cas carefully arranged Sam’s head against his shoulder and walked toward the hangar entrance.

Dean shrugged; if it was that easy for Cas to carry Sam, he certainly wasn’t gonna argue—he knew what it would be like for him, and what a long walk to the car it was. “Why won’t he? What did this to him?” he asked, following Cas out.

“He is far away, and there is much to see and know where he is,” Cas answered mysteriously. Dean rolled his eyes as Cas settled Sam into the rust-bucket car they were using while his baby was on the bench. No, Cas wasn’t going to be much help, but as Dean glanced over his shoulder at the ominous shadow of the abandoned hangar, he had to admit he was glad he wasn’t in this alone.

He and Sam had come to this town for the usual reasons—mysterious happenings. Only these weren’t the usual kind, if there was a usual kind. People were disappearing, which was common enough—but after a few days, they came back. Not so common. Most of them returned with no memory of what had happened or where they’d been—they’d just woken up somewhere, and found their way home. They’d been unable to give Sam and Dean any useful information, except where they’d found themselves upon waking.

A few of the victims, though, had not gotten off so easy. They had found their way home, but it had not ended there. They had sleep disturbances, strange dreams, and escalating odd behavior. Some of them slept more and more, until they were spending hardly any time awake, and got angry at anyone who tried to rouse them. Three had ended up in mental institutions, one was heading that way, and one was in the hospital, slipping inexplicably in and out of a coma doctors could find no cause for. The common thread was that these victims all wanted to go _back_ to wherever they’d been while they were missing—but they couldn’t say where that was.

Dean had talked to the wife of one of the institutionalized victims. She said that he wanted to go back to the Galapagos Islands. The problem was, he didn’t want to go there _now._ He wanted to go back to the time he’d spent there in college. He was a scientist, and had spent a semester there doing a marine biology project that had shaped his whole career, and that was one of his fondest memories. His wife said he was talking as if he’d just been there, and talking to people he hadn’t seen in over 20 years, some of whom were even dead now. But he was convinced he could get there—that he could _walk_ there, no less. She’d had to have him locked up because he kept wandering away in the night and getting picked up by the cops.

So that day, Sam had done something complicated with a map showing the locations where the victims had awoken, and decided the hangar was the epicenter. He and Sam had armed themselves with every protection and weapon they could think of, and had gone out to investigate it. They had found absolutely nothing—no blood, no tracks, barely even any disturbed dust. The place seemed utterly abandoned. Dean had been really creeped out by it, actually. He hadn’t expected that there would be old wrecks of _planes_ there, but Sam had pointed out that they had to go someplace when they could no longer be flown or repaired. Still, the hulking, silent commuter planes, the occasional jet rusting into nothing, and even a few old props and biplanes, crouching silently in the vast space, had made Dean’s skin crawl. Sam had teased him that it was just his fear of flying, but considering the state Sam was now in, perhaps there had been something else to it.

They had split up to cover more ground, and Dean had found nothing at all, and hadn’t even been worried until he’d finished looking around and headed back to Sam’s side of the hangar, and Sam didn’t answer his repeated shouts for him. He’d found him on the floor, not a mark on him, but impossible to wake. He’d left him to look around, trying to find what had done it, but he had found nothing—no sulfur, no EMF, no signs of a struggle. The problem was that the hangar was such a huge space to cover. He’d have to go back and investigate thoroughly, if he could get Cas to keep an eye on Sam. Maybe he should call Garth for help.

Or maybe Cas could help, if Dean was careful. Even if Cas had the power to fix it and knew what to do, he was so easily frightened that Dean might not be able to get anything from him. So he tried to keep his voice pleasant and chose his words carefully.

“So, um… I’ll head back to our squat, unless you think he needs the hospital,” he said.

“Squat is such an ugly word. Squat. Nothing good ever comes from that word. Has anyone ever said, ‘This squat is beautiful’ or ‘My, what a graceful squat you have, where did you learn it?’ I think—”

“Cas,” Dean broke in as gently as he could, biting back his impatience. “Do you think Sam needs the hospital?”

“Why would Sam want to sleep in a hospital? Hospitals are even uglier than squats,” Cas opined.

Dean glanced in the rearview at him. He had settled in the back with Sam, and Dean hadn’t argued, but he felt uncomfortable now, looking back. Cas hadn’t laid Sam on the seat; he held him in his lap, with Sam’s head resting on his shoulder, his legs draped over the angel’s arm. It looked… weird. Distressingly vulnerable, and… intimate.

Dean shook his head. “OK then. I guess you’re right, if he’s just sleeping… back to… where we’re staying.” He looked away from the strangely bright smile Cas gave him in the mirror.

~* * *~

Over the next few days, Sam attended the class that Cas taught, and afterwards they always walked. He seemed to be the only person in the class, and Cas’s lectures were bizarre and beautiful. Sam decided he must be a history professor, but his historical descriptions were laced with what Sam could only think of as poetry, strange words tumbling together into a beautiful whole. He could not understand what Cas was trying to teach, and yet he felt he was learning everything he needed to know.

After he left Cas to return to his dorm or eat in the cafeteria, things would gradually fade to that distant unreality, graying and flattening, until he wondered if Cas was a dream, if he had ever really met such a man. At these times, his heart broke. He had never felt loneliness in this place before, but it assaulted him now… loneliness, creeping, dark, ugly memories that he could never fully bring to light, and a deep, frantic restlessness he tried desperately to escape. He could never be sure that Cas was real, until he found himself walking into his classroom each day, when he became the only real thing.

He gradually became aware of a struggle inside himself—or, more precisely, a struggle between himself and this place. Whenever he thought with longing of something—food, or an old beloved piece of clothing he thought right for that day’s weather—he would always find it moments later. It was hard to hold his thoughts about this in his mind. Whenever he felt discontent, such as with the loneliness he had begun to feel, it was like something was mentally _wrestling_ him, trying to subdue or push aside those feelings, and Sam instinctively fought to keep them. He did not understand why—why should he not just be happy? This place seemed to ask him the same question on a daily basis.

One day, he had not seen Cas, and his memory of him was fading, and his restlessness was so acute it was almost pain. He ran to escape it. He ran long past the point when he would have stopped normally, having gotten enough exercise and feeling ready for something else. He found Cas, standing by the duck pond where they had first met.

“Cas,” he wheezed, running up to him. “I… I wanted to find you.” He couldn’t say he was looking for him, because he had not been, as his memory of him drifted away.

“I wanted to find you, too,” Cas said, smiling. He was so _real._ His beauty pierced Sam suddenly then, and tears sprang to his eyes. Why did he have to leave Cas? Why was he alone in this place?

“Cas,” he said finally, as they started their usual stroll. “I… there’s something wrong with me. I don’t know what to do. I don’t understand… where we are, or why I’m here. I keep looking, but all I ever find is you, and you don’t know the answer.”

“I do not. But I believe you do.”

“I don’t!” Sam cried. “I don’t know! I thought I came here to get an education, but I never learn anything, except from you… I don’t understand anything, but I know I need _something,_ and I…” he clutched his chest. “It _hurts,_ in here, anytime I think I might remember something… it hurts, and I’m afraid.” He looked up at Cas, his eyes full of pleading.

Cas gazed at him compassionately. “If I can help in any way, Sam…” He reached for Sam’s hand and brushed the back of it briefly.

Sam jolted violently, as if electrically shocked. He stood rigidly upright, his eyes went wide, and he gasped for breath, staring at Cas.

“Sam? What’s wrong?”

“Do that again,” Sam breathed.

Cas smiled. As always, his smile was sad, but this time, there was something else… pride? A hint of sensuality? “This?” he asked innocently, and brushed his hand over Sam’s again, lingering this time.

Sam seized his hand and pressed it to his face. He gasped at the wave of pleasure that rocked him—pleasure and desire. Cas let out a startled sound, and Sam knew he felt it too.

“It was _you,”_ Sam breathed. “I… I was looking for you, I needed you. You’re the only real thing—the only thing I can remember.”

“What do you remember?” Cas asked breathlessly. His hand was slack in Sam’s, still pressed to Sam’s cheek, as if he didn’t dare move it. But he stretched his fingers out hesitantly now, caressing, and Sam gasped again, his eyes closing sensuously.

“Yes…” Sam breathed. “Yes, Cas, please, touch me…” A great shudder ran through him, and he stepped closer, loosely circling Cas with his arms.

Cas complied with Sam’s request. He stroked Sam’s cheek with infinite tenderness and then, moving closer, put his other hand in his hair, curling his fingers over his neck.

Sam’s breathing quickened until he was panting; his head fell back in Cas’s hands and he clutched his forearms, securing his hands against his face. He turned his head quickly and caught Cas’s fingers with his lips, kissing them feverishly. Suddenly he groaned loudly and staggered against Cas, clutching him close.

 “Oh, Cas… Cas,” he half-sobbed. “You _broke_ me… you destroyed me and then you saved me, and I couldn’t tell you… I don’t know why I couldn’t tell you—it was _you. You_ are what I needed, what I was looking for, what I wanted so much it was killing me… I’m _awake_ now, I’m awake, Cas, please, please, kiss me…”

Sam dragged Cas up by the collar of his trenchcoat and kissed him almost brutally, hard and deep and frantic, and Cas responded, clutching Sam’s hair, dragging him closer. But he cried out softly, as if in pain, and Sam released him, taking his face in his hands with a look of panic.

Cas moaned again. “It hurts,” he whispered.

“What, Cas? What hurts you? Let me fight it!”

“I… I am sorry, Sam. So sorry that it hurts me terribly. I know it is true that I… I _broke_  you, just as you say, but I don’t think it’s true that I saved you… oh…” Cas gasped and clutched his belly, doubling over and falling to his knees.

“ _No,”_ Sam groaned. He knelt next to Cas and took hold of his shoulders, forcing him to straighten. “Cas, you did! I know you did—don’t hurt yourself—” For somehow Sam knew that’s what Cas was doing, and that it was no outside force acting on him, but only his own heart and conscience.

“It hurts so much, Sam,” Cas whispered, panting in agony as he uncurled. “I… I think I almost destroyed the whole world, and damaged a good part of it, but what hurts most is that I hurt _you_.”

“But you _saved_ me,” Sam insisted, cupping Cas’s face in both hands. “And you made a sacrifice to do it—I know you did…” Sam stopped, distracted. Cas’s pain seemed to be assuaged by his touch; he had grown still, and he was gazing up into Sam’s eyes.

And touching Cas was _doing_ things to Sam. He felt alive, for the first time in this place, strong and vivid, and like he wished desperately to remain so. The feeling of real solidity that he had perceived when he looked at Cas was magnified a thousand times when he touched him, and it came into him until he was close to being part of it, being real himself, and he needed this more desperately than he ever remembered needing anything. Swirling desire pulsed up through his hands where they rested on Cas’s face, up his arms and all through his body, electric pleasure, irresistible. He crushed Cas close and kissed him again, and the hysterical, desperate passion that rose in him shocked him like a million volts, dashed him on the rocks like a raging, primeval tide, obliterating him. Any control he had ever had snapped, and he could hear his own voice, begging helplessly and abjectly, but he couldn’t stop it.

“Please Cas, please, please, oh God, please,” he cried. “Touch me, oh please, I’ll… I’ll die if you don’t…” He knew it was true. He smothered his words with Cas’s mouth, thrusting his tongue against his. He whimpered at the shock of ecstasy Cas’s sweet, hesitant response sent through him, moaned frantically at the raging _demand_ for more, more, now, and heard himself saying the words.

“Now, now, I need you now, oh, Jesus, Cas!” he cried as he pressed himself desperately nearer. “Please… oh God, I want you, I need you so much… I couldn’t feel it, couldn’t say it, and now it will kill me… I needed to tell you that I love you! I have to have you…”

He had shoved Cas down on the grass, grinding against him desperately, frantically untucking and unbuttoning and tearing at his clothes, but the clothes were suddenly gone, as were his own, and he was in a soft, wide bed, with Cas’s limbs twining tenderly, slowly around him. Everything was white, and Cas’s skin sliding against Sam both soothed him and inflamed him, and there were… wings? Blindingly bright, silken soft, embracing him, wrapping him close…

“I am yours, Sam. I was always yours.”

~* * *~

I believe I had always loved Sam Winchester, always and before he was born and after he died, all the times. His pleas, the movements of his body sang to me, like the harmonizing of spheres. To touch him was my imperative and my pleasure. This beautiful human (and I knew, though I did not remember, that I was _not_ human, that I was eons more and so much less) hummed in my blood and vibrated the earth beneath us, his beauty singing through me, ringing in the cells of the flesh I lived in, in the limbs I used to hold him, like bells. Bells. Yes. Bells rang in this vessel, come, come to liturgy, come worship at the church of Sam Winchester and be glad. Rejoice in him, for he is the power and the beauty and the sacrifice, and I laid my heart upon his altar long ago. Now I lay my body there, too, this body I inhabit, so that he may slide against it, enclose and invade and surrender to it, and it sings and sings in praise of him.

Adoration is mine now, adoration and desire. I have always been made of love, and love has made itself out of me in painful ways, made its terrible transformative choices, destroying that which I love and that which loves me, and itself, and maybe the world; maybe. Maybe, but I love Sam Winchester, and adore him, and desire him with a desire deeper than oceans, brighter than stars when you are right on top of them, as I am on top of him, as I take him in every way I know how and many ways I don’t, take him inside me and beg to be allowed to keep him forever. Forever: I know it better than most, and I want it with him.

He tastes like a thunderstorm, feels like holding a hurricane against my skin, and this is his need. It awakens a torrent of answering need in me. I take him with these hands that are strangely unfamiliar, and this body that is, and I swallow his cries and his essence with this eager, desperate mouth. I know no words for this devastating beauty and pleasure. Even though I know all the words.

~* * *~

Dean watched Cas settle Sam on the old mattress at their squat. Cas was right; it was an ugly word, and an ugly place. But they couldn’t risk a hotel right now, and Dean doubted that nicer surroundings would really help Sam, anyway.

“Can you help him, Cas?” he asked quietly.

“I do not know. But I can go with him,” Cas said in an oddly cheerful tone. He sat down on the floor and placed his hand on Sam’s forehead.

“What do you mean? Doesn’t seem like he’s goin’ anywhere right now.”

Cas shook a finger condescendingly at Dean and gave him another disconcertingly bright smile. “That’s where you’re wrong. Well, one of the places.” He closed his eyes.

“Hey! Wait! What are you doing?”

Cas opened one eye. “Dean. A little privacy, please.”

“Damn it, Cas! I need to know what you’re going to do, and what I can do to help Sam! I can’t just leave him like this!”

A troubled look had come over Cas’s face while Dean was speaking, but not at Dean’s words. He was looking at Sam and touching his face gently. “No,” Cas murmured. “You cannot. He is fading. It may be time for desperate measures.”

~* * *~

Sam loved Cas wildly, blindly, with raging passion, and then slowly, erotically, tenderly, bestowing every kiss and touch that had built up inside him, caged behind some impervious wall, and though he couldn’t remember, he knew it had been there a long time, and that he had been unable to speak of it or act on it. He could not imagine how he could have fought it, when it consumed his whole being now, here in Cas’s arms.

They lay still at last, panting into silence, twined around each other and bathed in sweat. Sam caressed the feathery curve above Cas’s shoulder wonderingly. “Angel,” he said softly, and realized he had always known it, long before those magnificent wings enfolded him. “You’re an angel.”

“Yes, I believe I am,” said Cas tranquilly. He kissed Sam lingeringly, and Sam lost the thread of the conversation for a while, lost time. When their lips parted, Sam looked around the room, which seemed to be his dorm room, but even more muted and colorless than usual. It also seemed to be… shrinking? Or expanding? It didn’t matter. Only Cas mattered.

“Cas,” Sam murmured, sliding against the angel lazily, tenderly, “where are we?”

“We are in your mind, Sam. You are sleeping.” The world was falling away, colors dissolving, all but Cas’s face and then even that, and last of all the stubbornly celestial blue of his eyes. Sound closed off suddenly too, and Sam was back in himself, but also in nothing; the void closed around him but for the small, ringing sound of Cas’s voice, the words falling clear:

“Would you like to wake up?”

~* * *~

Wake up. Yes. He was trying to wake up. There was something he had to say, and when he woke, he’d be able to say it.

He remembered a piece of what had happened before he came to this place. He was pacing through the dim, cavernous space of the old airplane hangar, shining his flashlight into the old wrecks of planes. There was so little sign to follow. He had no luck for a long time, but then, he thought he saw a whisper of movement in an old, small prop plane. He shone light into the cockpit. There were signs of a nest there, but for something small; not the usual monster’s lair. This could almost be a crow’s nest, and maybe that’s what it was. There was a small collection of personal items nestled in among the scraps of cloth and seat-stuffing that made a soft place for something to sleep. Sam moved closer and identified a tarnished pendant, a cell phone, a billfold, and a tube of lip balm. There was also a creased, wallet-sized photograph. He reached into the open door of the cockpit to take it, but stopped when he saw movement again.

He gasped quietly when a very small child moved into the light. It looked barely old enough to walk—hardly more than an infant. Sam realized after a moment that it wasn’t human. It looked nearly human, but there was something slightly wrong about its shape, and he thought its skin had a bluish or grayish cast. It moved slowly, as if there were something wrong with it, and it made a small, pitiful moaning sound not unlike a baby’s cry. Sam’s heart wrenched. He raised his gun, but how could he shoot a _baby?_ And a baby _what,_ exactly?

“Hey,” said Sam in a gentle, soothing voice. He put his gun hand behind his back and reached out with the other, making a reassuring gesture. “Hey, not gonna hurt you. Is that your nest? You alone here?”

He inched forward carefully, trying to get a good look at it, but as the light touched its face, he leaped back with a gasp as a jolt of realization hit him. The child’s face was tattooed around the edges, and the tattoos swirled in a horribly familiar way. Its eyes glowed blue as it leaped toward Sam…

 _Oh no…_ was Sam’s last thought as something sharp pierced his arm, and an oddly welcoming numbness washed over him, carrying him down not into darkness, but into strangely diluted sunlight.

~* * *~

Dean looked up with a wry grin at the “shave-and-a-haircut” knock on the door of their squat. That was Garth all over; he probably thought of this as a “secret knock.” He was getting better, though—Dean hadn’t seen headlights or heard a car approach. “Come in,” he called absently, still gazing at an unmoving Cas, hunched over his equally unmoving brother.

Cas had been sitting for hours with one hand on Sam’s forehead and one on his chest, completely still. It was creepy, and probably not safe, to leave them like that, so Dean had called Garth, told him what he knew, and asked him to check out the hangar. Garth had cheerfully agreed.

He strode into the room with a bundle of tattered cloth in his arms. “Hey, Dean!” he said, laying the bundle on an old broken dresser in the corner and opening his arms. “C’mere, you,” he said expansively, and Dean frowned, but came forward for the requisite hug. He couldn’t help it. He really liked the guy, cheesy or not.

“Well,” said Garth, returning to the bundle and opening it, “I found your ‘monster’.” He made air quotes around the word.

“GAAH!” Dean shuddered and jumped back from the bundle. “Jesus, Garth! A _baby?”_ Dean had seen every horror the supernatural world had to offer in his time as a hunter, not to mention his tenure in Hell, but dead babies were a little too much even for him.

“An infant Djinn,” said Garth proudly. “And I didn’t kill it, Mr. Jump-to-Conclusions. It was already dead. I found it in its nest. No sign of an adult anywhere in the hangar. I think the little one was an orphan.”

“We considered a Djinn, but the symptoms don’t match,” said Dean, averting his eyes from the corpse.

“That’s because Junior here hadn’t fully developed his powers yet,” said Garth. “It wasn’t old enough to survive on its own, but it was trying. Sam was its last victim, and it didn’t get enough of what it needed from him. I guess it starved to death.”

“Well, saves us having to gank it, I guess,” Dean muttered. “But how did it get there, in the hangar?”

“It might have been born there. I’m pretty sure a hunter named Caleb killed its mother. Did a little research, and a Djinn was killed in this area about three and a half years ago.”

“They age differently from humans? This thing doesn’t look that old.”

“It isn’t. Djinn lay eggs, and the incubation period? A little over five years.”

“So Mama Djinn lays an egg, gets ganked, and the little one hatches four years later and starts looking for food.”

“That’s about the size of it. The method of administering venom is different for the little ones—they bite—and I don’t think this one knew what it was doing. No Mama Djinn to teach it. After the incapacitation from its venom wore off, it couldn’t keep them captive. From what you told me of the victim’s stories, it also wasn’t able to figure out how to make a wished-for life for its victims, so it used memories that it was able to draw from their minds. Their favorite memories.”

Dean winced, remembering what the adult Djinn had done to his mind. His constructed life had been all too thorough. He wondered what it built from fragments of memory in Sam’s mind—where Sam was now. “Well?” he said sharply. “What do we do for Sam?”

Garth looked troubled. “I just don’t know, amigo,” he said. “That’s the other thing. I think the little guy was kind of like a baby rattlesnake. He injected more venom than the systems of the victims could really take, because it’s never learned what the right amount is. That’s why the one guy was in a coma, the others have lingering effects, and Sam here won’t wake up.” Garth looked down at Sam sadly.

“Well, won’t it wear off soon?” Dean said, trying to swallow the hysteria he could hear building in his own voice.

Garth looked up, an unwontedly serious look on his face. “That’s just it, Dean,” he said gently. “The guy in a coma? He died this morning.”

~* * *~

“Dean. I think you will be happier if you don’t know.”

Cas had come out of his trance about an hour before, after Garth had left. He had not seemed very interested in the dead Djinn or the details of what they thought had happened to Sam, nor had he given any details of what he’d seen in Sam’s mind. Instead he had spent a while spouting the crazy, poetic crap that drove Dean nuts, and there was something about it that made Dean even more uneasy than usual… it had a weirdly _romantic_ sound to it. He’d then said he was going to try something to awaken Sam, and asked Dean to leave while he did it.

“Then you don’t know me very well, Cas,” Dean answered him sharply. “You better tell me what you’re gonna do to him.”

Cas sighed. “I am going to kiss him.”

Dean’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. He cocked his head at Cas as if not sure he’d heard correctly. “Umm… you’re gonna what?”

“Kiss him. I assume it has to be me, since as his brother, you would not—”

“GAAAAAAH,” Dean shuddered violently, holding up his hand between himself and Cas. “Stop right there. I mean, why would that work? A kiss is gonna wake him up, just like the fairytales?”

“Yes. That is where the fairytales come from. It must be someone who feels something for him. I do not know if it will work, because… it may be that he has to feel something for me, as well. But perhaps friendship will be enough.”

“Wait. _Wait,”_ said Dean. As usual, he put things together fairly quickly. “You _feel_ something for Sam? As in, ‘you’re a good guy, thanks for saving the world,’ or as in, ‘I enjoy your manly muscles, let’s get busy’?”

Cas stared blankly at Dean, opened his mouth as if to answer, then appeared to give up. He knelt down by Sam’s bedside and pushed the hair back from his face. He looked up when Dean made a horrified choking sound.

“What?” said Cas, meeting Dean’s eye.

“You… you _do,”_ he said. “You have a thing for Sam!”

The thin paper wrapping that Dean thought of as “the old Cas” was tearing, revealing the new, broken Cas. But this Cas gazed longingly at Sam, too. “Sam is… better than clouds whirring across the sun. He looks like what Chopin wished his music sounded like, but never really thought it did. Sam is lovelier than eels.”

Dean could not keep quiet at this. “ _Eels?”_

Cas looked at Dean very seriously. “Eels are very beautiful, Dean. Have you ever watched them swimming? There is a striped eel of a particular shade of soft blue… I would say it is a singing blue, but it’s more of a _thrumming_ blue, and that is the color of Sam’s eyes. I wish I could see them,” he said wistfully.

Dean cleared his throat. “The eels? Why couldn’t ya, they extinct or something?”

“Not the eels. Sam’s eyes.” Cas stroked a wisp of hair off of Sam’s forehead, his fingers lingering. He gazed at Sam a moment longer, then frowned. He leaned forward and pressed his head to Sam’s chest.

“Dean,” he said sharply. “I must do this now. He is fading.”

Dean had leapt forward when Cas looked worried, and he pressed his own head to Sam’s chest, shoving Cas unceremoniously out of the way. “Jesus, his heart is barely beating! I can’t believe I let this get this far,” Dean moaned. “Cas, enough with the kissing crap. We need to get him to a hospital _now.”_

“He is too far away, Dean. He cannot be brought back that way. Don’t you trust me?”

Dean took a sharp, angry breath to tell Cas just how much he didn’t trust him. How could he, after all he had done? But the look in Cas’s eyes stopped him. He had sacrificed his own sanity to save Sam once. Dean knew that, crazy or not, he would do anything to save him again now.

“All right,” he said frantically. “Do it. I’ll… I’ll be right out here.” He knew he couldn’t watch this, but he hoped he wasn’t simply betraying Sam by letting a crazy angel molest him. He retreated to the next room, praying that whatever Cas believed, he would somehow heal Sam.

~* * *~

“Would you like to wake up?” Cas was asking.

Sam swam through golden light. He didn’t want to wake up, not really. He wanted to stay here with Cas. But… was this the real Cas? Would the real Cas love Sam? Could he even love him, having taken Sam’s hell memories into himself in order to save him?

Sam realized he was remembering. His life was coming back, but he was not sure he wanted it to. The pain of guilt was like hot razors scraping him. Cas… his mind crippled by Sam’s memories, still faithfully trying to help them. Cas… who needed them now, needed someone to help him and direct him, as he had helped and directed them so many times, however terrible his mistakes along the way had been.

Cas, who deserved to know that Sam loved him, and always had.

“Yes,” Sam whispered.

~* * *~

Dean was on fire with terrified impatience as the minutes ticked by. Pacing a hole in the floor, he paused every minute or so to listen, straining his ears for any sound from the adjoining room. There was utter silence. Had Cas disappeared, leaving Sam dead or dying on the old stained mattress without even a word to Dean?

Finally he couldn’t stand it anymore. He burst into the room, and froze at the tableau that greeted him.

Cas was kissing Sam deeply, and to Dean’s shock, Sam’s arms rose slowly and curled around the angel’s neck. His fingers brushed at Cas’s hair as Cas finally, reluctantly broke the kiss.

“Hello, Sam,” said Cas, politely, but breathlessly. “Did you sleep well?”

Sam framed Cas’s face with his hands, preventing him from drawing away. He blinked sleepy, eel-blue eyes at Cas and gave him a smile of sad, heartbreaking sweetness.

“Cas,” he said in a dry, hoarse voice. “I have something to tell you.”

 

~The End~


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